As we finish Celebrating 2024: A Year of Versatile WebRTC Solutions and look ahead to 2025, WebRTC.ventures is buzzing with excitement about the future of real-time communication technology. Our team of WebRTC and related experts are gearing up for another year filled with innovation, growth, and new opportunities in the world of real time communications.
From protocol innovations to AI and other emerging technologies, the WebRTC ecosystem continues to evolve in exciting ways. Let’s explore a few things that 2025 has in store for our growing field.
WebRTC continues steady growth
As we approach the five-year mark since WebRTC became an official web standard, its maturity and widespread browser support have solidified its position as the go-to technology for real-time communication on the web. The number of WebRTC-related projects on GitHub has been steadily rising even after the pandemic, showing no signs of slowing down.
On the standards front, WebRTC continues to evolve and integrate with emerging technologies. WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol) and WHEP (WebRTC-HTTP Egress Protocol) are gaining momentum, particularly with their adoption by major cloud providers and integration into frameworks like GStreamer. These protocols represent significant advancements in how live media content is handled and delivered. The growing support for WHIP and WHEP underscores the industry’s recognition of their potential to simplify real-time media workflows.
Media Over QUIC, while still a draft, has gone through multiple revisions and could soon (probably not this year unless you want to do R&D) become a streaming alternative with significant improvements in latency, connection establishment times, scalability and reliability.
HTTP/3, built on top of QUIC, represents another major advancement in the web communication landscape that is already being used in production by companies like Meta, Cloudflare and Google. By eliminating head-of-line blocking and reducing connection establishment times, HTTP/3 can significantly improve the app performance which includes media delivery.
Additional tech such as WebCodecs for encoding/decoding media and WebAssembly for compiled operations that require high-performance media processing and low-latency tasks such as packet loss recovery and echo cancellation, are also gaining significant traction in the WebRTC ecosystem. They work together to provide more granular control over media processing enabling developers like ourselves to build more customizable and efficient live streaming and real-time communication applications.
AI and other emerging technologies
Our team completed numerous AI-forward and AI-integration projects in 2024, and we expect this trend to continue as conversational AI becomes a very powerful tool for enhancing user experiences and automating complex workflows. From real-time communication enhancements to personalized user interactions, AI’s capabilities are reshaping how businesses engage with their customers and empower their workforce.
The introduction of OpenAI’s Realtime API in October was a significant step towards optimizing interactions between AI models and voice based communication systems. December’s announcement of the OpenAI Realtime API WebRTC Endpoint further closed the remaining gaps required to integrate WebRTC with large language models (LLMs). The result is more seamless, lower-latency integrations that unlock new possibilities for real-time communication solutions. Other Cloud providers and open source options are keeping up in this area and we plan to continue leveraging these options throughout the year. For more insights, check out my recent post comparing some of the technologies we use for AI-powered real-time communication: Real Time Voice AI: OpenAI vs. Open Source Solutions.
Video AI will remain a key focus for us, with projects ranging from image recognition and AI-powered video editing to realistic talking heads for video conferences. As multimodal AI service providers support video, we expect growth in this area. However, due to the significantly higher bandwidth demands of video and the current focus on text and audio, we likely won’t see a Video OpenAI Realtime API this year.
Looking ahead, we’re also excited to continue working using emerging technologies like IoT and 5G which will enhance real-time communication capabilities. These advancements open up new opportunities for our clients across industries such as telehealth, education, satellite communications, AI-powered assistants, and call centers.
Pushing the boundaries of WebRTC
As one of the few software development agencies dedicated to WebRTC, we’re excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with this technology. Whether it’s developing advanced applications for virtual and augmented reality experiences or creating innovative solutions for industries like healthcare and finance, we’re ready to take on new challenges.
At WebRTC.ventures, we’re not just observers of these exciting trends – we’re active participants in shaping the future of real-time communication. As we move into 2025, we’re committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions that bring our clients’ live audio and video application dreams to life. Here’s to another year of innovation, collaboration, and success in the world of WebRTC!
